, Korea has decided to choose a foreign contractor through open bidding to supply 20 “next-generation” fighter jets in the coming years, a project to cost around 2.3 trillion won ($2.4 billion), defense officials said Wednesday (Jan. 17).
The project follows Seoul's contract with the U.S. company Boeing Co. in 2002 to buy 40 F-15K jets for $4.6 billion. Eighteen jets have been delivered so far, with the remainder to be introduced by next year.
“We plan to draw up a detailed plan for the procurement project next month and distribute the proposal in March, with the aim of signing a contract by February next year,” said Major General Kim Deuk-hwan, director-general for aircraft programs at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration.
The decision was made at a defense procurement project committee meeting presided over by Defense Minister Kim Jang-soo at the Defense Ministry building in central Seoul.
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Korea has pushed for the purchase of 120 next-generation fighter jets as part of its blueprint for overhauling the military's structure and drastically increasing combat capability by 2020.
“It is a plan to secure 20 highly efficient multipurpose fighter jets to actively counter threats by neighboring countries under the National Defense Reform 2020 project,” Kim said. “We will introduce the aircraft between 2010 and 2012.”
He indicated that Lockheed Martin's F-35 model will be ruled out, saying the Air Force needs double-engine fighters.
“There are a lot of differences between the single-engine F-35 and what our military needs, including weapons capacity and flight scope,” Kim said.
Korean officials expect the introduction of a foreign model to help the country learn the core technology needed for the designing and manufacturing of advanced aircraft, as well as contributing to the development of the domestic aerospace industry and the creation of jobs.
In 2002, Seoul chose Boeing's F-15K, probably in consideration of the long-standing military alliance with the United States, giving a new lifeline to Boeing's then-sputtering F-15 production line in Missouri. The French-built fighter Rafale reportedly beat the F-15K by a narrow margin in the technical phase of evaluation. Two other fighters, the Russian Sukhoi Su-35 and the Typhoon from European consortium Eurofighter, also joined in the competition.
